The School of Art History, SAIMS and Special Collections Division at the University of St Andrews are pleased to announce an upcoming two-day conference on the archive in medieval art and thought.

The word archive suggests the acts of taxonomy and conservation, but also interpretation and regulation. Its etymology traces back to the Greek arkheion, thus highlighting the political nature of the physical archive and the act of archiving itself. The medieval world maintained this sense of privileged access. Isidore of Seville connected the Latin word archivium with arca, strongbox, and arcanum, mystery. But the term was malleable, referring to collections of various goods and treasures, not just of parchment records and registers. And yet, Michael Clanchy has argued that the medieval mind did not always distinguish between the library and the archive, as we do today.

The organisers therefore invite proposals on the theme of the expanded medieval archive, as it relates to art and material culture. What can medieval collections, compilations, and assemblages of material things tell us about the accumulation of knowledge and the preservation of memory? How is the archive manipulated to fit political or social agendas, and by whom? What are the limits of the medieval archive? Paper topics and themes may include, though are not limited to:

Records or inventories of collections, secular, civic, and ecclesiastical;

The archive as a physical object or visual record, including books and manuscripts, buildings, reliquaries, etc.;

The accretive nature of written testimony in the form of: chronicles, herbals, visitations, necrologies, inscriptions and tituli;

Time, writing history through the material, and collapsing temporalities;

The creation and perpetuation of memory, identity, and authority;

The accumulation and transmission of cultural or familial knowledge via material culture;

The politics of preservation, documentation, and display in the medieval world, and of the medieval in the modern world.

Collecting, Curating, Assembling: New Approaches to the Archive in the Middle Ages will take place 13–14 September 2019 in St Andrews, Scotland. Professor Erik Inglis (Oberlin College) will deliver the keynote. The organisers intend to publish the conference proceedings as an edited volume.

All papers must be no more than 30 minutes maxmimum. Please submit a 250 word abstract and title by 15 February 2019. Prof Julian Luxford, Prof Kathryn Rudy, and Dr Emily Savage, along with Senior Archivist Rachel Hart, warmly welcome all submissions and queries at medievalarchive@st-andrews.ac.uk.

During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, minorities in the Iberian peninsula experienced both peaceful coexistence and, at times, violent intolerance. But despite restrictions, persecutions, and forced conversions, extensive cultural production and exchange among Jews, Christians and Muslims defined the life in towns and cities across the centuries, particularly in Al-Andalus. In this context of religious (in)tolerance, the question of limpieza de sangre (blood purity) played an important role in preventing newly converted Christians from occupying high social positions. Recent approaches have highlighted how the question of limpieza de sangre was not only a matter of anti-Judaism or hostility towards Jews and Moors, but was also driven by personal enmity, ambition, and political interest. Also relevant are a series of political decisions concerning minorities, such as conversos or moriscos, which appeared in the two first decades of the seventeenth century and deeply affected the social climate of the time. This is reflected in literary works from the period, when a number of prominent pieces dealt directly with the issues raised by the political reforms. While some of the decisions are very well studied, such as the expulsion of the moriscos in 1609 and 1610, others such as the issue of the Pardons, in which the both Duke of Lerma and the Count-Duke of Olivares were involved, are less well known. It is clear that these circumstances affected the lives of many authors, their poetic trajectories and determined their voices and their works.

The conference will focus on the discussion about the Islamic heritage in Italy and Spain and its later reception in the post-Islamic context. Sharing an Islamic past, both countries display this heritage in different ways through art and architecture. As cultural contact zones, Italy and Spain had a rich Islamic tradition, which has been adopted in the medieval Norman and Mudéjar artistic production.

These exchange processes are currently subject to ongoing international discussions. Furthermore, the observed medieval transfer mechanisms may be applied to the modern reception of the Italian and Spanish Islamic heritage. Which differences may be detected between the medieval edifices of Palermo or Seville and the neo-Islamic interiors in Sammezzano or Aranjuez? Has the reception behaviour of the 19th and 20th centuries changed compared to that of the Middle Age? How have the Islamic standards been assumed in the modern architectural vocabulary? Who were the possible promotors of this pro-Islamic art trend? What part did the medieval clients and their architects play? How relevant are the travellers, private collectors, arabists or art historians of the 19th century for the valorisation of the Islamic heritage? What was the role of Islamic heritage for the construction of identity and ideologies in both countries?

The current contributions shall be presented in four sections with the following thematic focus:

– Islamic heritage in Italy and Spain
– Cross-cultural exchange in the Middle Age
– Re-appropriating the Islamic past in 19th and 20th centuries art and architecture
– Ideologies and identity building

Papers will have a duration of 20 min. Conference languages will be English, Italian and Spanish. Abstracts of no more than 300 words, together with a short CV, should be sent until 30 April 2018 to: conference@transculturalstudies.ch

The Courtauld Institute of Art’s 23rd Annual Medieval Postgraduate Colloquium invites speakers to consider the nature of medieval collections, the context of their creation and fruition, and their legacy – or disappearance – in the present.

Existing approaches to the subject help to understand the formation, dispersal, and reassembly of groupings of objects. However, broadening the scope of what a medieval collection is can open new paths of exploration. From immense palace networks to single-volume manuscripts, a wide range of objects can pose complex and exciting questions regarding how physical and conceptual similarity and proximity shaped making and meaning in the Middle Ages.

The Medieval Postgraduate Colloquium offers the opportunity for research students at all levels from universities across the UK and abroad to present and promote their research.

Organised by Costanza Beltrami (The Courtauld Institute of Art / The Auckland Project) and Maggie Crosland (The Courtauld Institute of Art) with the generous support of The Sackler Research Forum.

Misericordia International is an internationally active multidisciplinary network dedicated to the study of choir stalls and their relation to other artistic manifestations during the Middle Ages and to the dissemination of results. The intensive exchange with researchers from neighboring disciplines reveals interfaces between disciplines and subjects of research and provides new impulses for the study of choir stalls. The platform for scholarly exchange is the international conference organized every two years.

The next colloquium will be held in Rijeka (Croatia) in September 2018. The conference seeks to explore and discuss the relation between choir stalls and their patrons. It aims to present original research in this field as well as to establish productive dialogue between scholars with a particular research interest in choir stalls. Artworks and their patrons have raised and continue to raise many research questions. While choir stalls have been studied extensively for the misericords with profane carvings, less research has been done on the commissions for this type of church furniture. In recent years the focus of choir stall research has moved toward makers and patrons, hence the previous colloquium’s topic was dedicated to the craftsmen and their workshops. The 2018 conference will focus on problems of ecclesiastical and secular patrons and questions such as who were the patrons of choir stalls and to what extent were they responsible for the final result, or are there differences or similarities between choir stalls considering different patrons – members of chapters, parishes, female and male monastic communities, confraternities and private persons.

We welcome academic papers that will approach this subject in an interdisciplinary and methodologically diverse way.

Acceptable topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:
– collaboration between patrons and craftsmen (carpenters, sculptors and painters)
– results of the archival research;
– inscriptions and used typography on choir stalls;
– migrations of craftsmen and migrations of stylistic features;
– center versus periphery;
– depiction of patrons on choir stalls.

Following the conference, a two-day excursion – visit to selected choir stalls of the region – is planned.
The conference language is English. A publication of the proceedings of this conference is forseen.
Papers should not exceed anticipated maximum time of 20 minutes and will be followed by a 10-minute discussion.

A paper proposal should contain the title and abstract (500 words maximum). Each proposal should be accompanied by full contact information (home and office mailing addresses, e-mail address, and phone number) and a short CV.

There is NO registration fee. Administration and organizational costs, working materials, lunch and
coffee breaks during conference are covered by the organizers. Travel expenses and accomodation ARE NOT COVERED.

The aim of this International Workshop is to establish an exchange opportunity to analyse the cultural legacy of the Western Islamic societies from different and complementary perspectives.
To achieve this aim, a double objective has been proposed: to create a space for dialogue in order to share recent research results, as well as to establish new research networks integrated by experienced and young researchers thus allowing for the development of interdisciplinary research lines on the late Middle Ages.
Within this general framework, the main goal will be to analyse the Islamic cultural legacy in a comprehensive approach, from the multidisciplinary fields of History of Art, Architecture, History, Archaeology, Philosophy, Music and History of Religions.

13:00
Rex Tyrannus or a self-aware Monarch? The fatimids influences on Roger II’s culture of power
Francesco Paolo TOCCO (University of Messina)

13:30
Dance, Music and Clothes: Distinctive Signs and Intercultural Relationships between East and West in Italian and Spanish Paintings during the first half of the 14th century
Maria PORTMANN (Conservator of the Historic Monuments in the Canton of the Valais, Switzerland)

14:00 Lunch

17:00
The impact of Sufism on Jewish Mysticim and its possible influence on Kabbalah
Dora ZSOM (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest)

17:30
Jews and rabbis at the court of Mehmet the Conqueror according to Eliyyahu Capsali’s Seder Eliyyahu Zuta
Francesca Valentina DIANA (University of Bologna)